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Finalist for the 2015 Epigram Books Fiction Prize Death of a Perm Sec is a mystery about the demise of the permanent-secretary of the housing ministry, Chow Sze Teck, accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes over his career. Set in 1980's Singapore, the novel examines the civil servant’s death, which first appears to be suicide by a cocktail of alcohol, morphine and Valium. But upon investigation by a CID inspector who might not be what he seems, the family discovers there may be far more sinister circumstances behind his death, that reach to the very top of government. The novel exposes the dark heart of power politics,from the country’s tumultuous post-independence days to the socio-political landscape of the 1980s.
--Winner of the 2015 Epigram Books Fiction Prize-- During the Christmas holidays in 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggers a tsunami that devastates fourteen countries. Two couples from Singapore are vacationing in Phuket when the tsunami strikes. Alternating between the aftermath of the catastrophe and past events that led these characters to that fateful moment, Now That It’s Over weaves a tapestry of causality and regret, and chronicles the physical and emotional wreckage wrought by natural and manmade disasters.
Gardens at Phoenix Park is a fictional story set against actual events, of three students who meet during the turbulent period of anti-government protests in Singapore of the late 1970s. As these fellow travellers cross the continent of the next four decades, their relationships with each other transform in complexity against a backdrop of social and political engineering. Min Chan is detained under the Internal Security Act. Shu Peng becomes complicit in the machinations of the ruling party. And Martin comes out of the closet during the 2011 general election. Even as the characters’ lives are shaped by events of the day, they also push back to shape a better future for themselves, as well as for the country.
Kevin is a young man without a soul, holidaying in Tokyo; Mr Five, the enigmatic kappa, is the man he so happens to meet. Little does Kevin know that kappas—the river demons of Japanese folklore—desire nothing more than the souls of other humans. Set between Singapore and Japan, Kappa Quartet is split into eight discrete sections, tracing the rippling effects of this chance encounter across a host of other characters, connected and bound to one another in ways both strange and serendipitous. Together they ask one another: what does it mean to be in possession of something nobody has seen before?
Devout Catholic school teacher Annabelle Thong never thought her chastity was a liability – until she runs away to Paris to find Prince Charming. Enrolling herself at the Sorbonne, she meets the suave Patrick Dudoigt, but he’s the one temptation she MUST resist. Annabelle’s belief system is challenged on all fronts, and her na?veté is seen as gauche in the City of Love. Guilt and confusion make for dangerous bedfellows, and when her fellow university students enthusiastically combine reading and rioting, Annabelle can’t help but wonder if everyone’s gone mad – or is it just her? Annabelle Thong takes a hilarious look at the sparks that fly when East meets West, and the passions these ignite.
Landon Locke is no ordinary barista. A man of many names and identities, he has lived though many lifetimes, but his memory spans only days. Danger brews as Landon struggles to piece together reality through his fog of amnesia. A mysterious organisation called CODEX bent on hunting him down, a man named John who claims to be a friend, and women from Landon's past who have come back to haunt him. As CODEX closes in, he finds himself increasingly backed into a corner. Battling an unreliable memory, Landon is forced to make a choice: who can he trust?
The Art of Advocacy in Singapore by Constance Singam,Margaret Thomas Pdf
Advocacy is a tricky pursuit in Singapore. Your motives can be questioned, your activities monitored, and your scope for action limited. Despite the constraints, civil society activists have persisted, finding ways to pursue their cause and to try to bring about the changes they believe important for Singapore. In 2013 a small group of civil society stalwarts set out to acknowledge the contributions of these unsung heroes. The Singapore Advocacy Awards was launched, a 3-year project that saw a total of 18 individuals and organisations being honoured. In this book, 37 activists, many of them winners of the Awards, write about their causes and discuss the strategies shaped and lessons learnt as they practise the delicate art of advocacy in Singapore. Reflecting the nature of civil society, there is a diversity of voices. Some give a more personal account, while others describe the institutional experience of advocacy work. Some essays are short and sweet, others long and detailed. They appear ordered alphabetically by the cause.
The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories by Pooja Nansi Pdf
The best short fiction published by Singaporean writers in 2017 and 2018. The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Four gathers the finest Singaporean stories published in 2017 and 2018, selected by guest editor Pooja Nansi from hundreds published in journals, magazines, anthologies and single-author collections. Accompanying the stories are the editor’s preface and an extensive list of honourable mentions for further reading. Reader Reviews "The stories range from intimate family portraits to speculative science fiction, but every piece speaks to universal experiences of love, loss, desire, and disappointment ... If you've either never read Singaporean literature, this would be a good place to start. If Crazy Rich Asians was the last thing you read by a local author, even better." — Wonderwall.sg
China's ‘Singapore Model’ and Authoritarian Learning by Stephan Ortmann,Mark R. Thompson Pdf
This book explores to what extent China has drawn lessons from Singapore, both in terms of its ruling ideology and through the policy-specific learning process. In so doing, it provides insights into the opportunities but also the challenges of this long-term learning process, focusing attention to how non-democratic regimes deal with modernization. The stellar line-up of international contributors, from China, Singapore, Europe, and the US, offer a variety of perspectives on Singapore as a model of "authoritarian modernism" for China. The book discusses how the small Southeast Asian city-state became a major reference point for China, how mainland observers often misunderstood the nature of Singapore’s governance and instrumentalized it to bolster the CCP’s legitimacy, and why the Singapore model appears to be in decline under Xi Jinping. The chapters also analyze policy-specific learning processes, including bilateral mechanisms of policy exchange, the Chinese "mayor’s class" in Singapore, and joint industrial projects and lessons in social welfare provision. The book will be of interest to academics working on Chinese politics; development in China; state society and economy in the Asia-Pacific; international relations in the Asia-Pacific; and Southeast Asian politics.
It is 1944 in India and Nimita Khosla yearns to attend university to become an engineer, but her parents want a different life for her. As she accepts her fate and marries, religious upheaval is splitting the country and forcing her family to find a new home. In 2014, her granddaughter, molecular biologist Nimita Sachdev, escapes India to run away from the prospect of an arranged marriage. Staking out a future in Singapore, she faces rising anger against immigrants and uncertainty about her new home. Two generations apart, these two women walk divergent paths but face the same quandaries: who are we, and what is home?
Today is National Day. It is also Cheryl Dada’s birthday. As Elderflower Home prepares for the celebration, Cheryl Dada too gets ready for her party. Between the hours of noon and seven p.m., she encounters the cantankerous residents and caregivers, her mother and people of yesteryears. What unfolds is a story about a woman coming to terms with age, loss and love.
Misdirection (Book One of The Savant Trilogy) by Ning Cai Pdf
Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2016 Longlist The first book in an exciting new YA mystery trilogy about a teenage savant on the trail of her family's killer, from the multi-talented Ning Cai, international magic celebrity and author. When parkour champion Maxine Schooling wakes from a three-year coma, she has no memory of how her parents and little brother were killed the night she was attacked. Using her new-found photographic memory, she covertly helps her hacker BFF with the police investigation of a savage serial killer on the loose. In her race to track down the Singapore Spectre, Max finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy involving stage illusions, a secret exposé, and a controversial megachurch headed by a powerful man. For over a decade, Ning Cai was known as a multi-award-winning stage illusionist and escape artist. After a brief period of retirement, she returned in 2017 as the mentalist Ning: Mind Magic Mistress. Her memoir Who is Magic Babe Ning? was shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize.
1987 by Chng Suan Tze,Low Yit Leng,Teo Soh Lung Pdf
Survivors of Operation Spectrum—the alleged Marxist conspiracy—speak up in this volume. For many of them, this is the first time that they cast their minds back to 1987 and try to make sense of the incident. What they did in that period was meaningful and totally legitimate. Their families and friends share the same view. The detainees were subjected to ill-treatment, humiliation, and manipulated television appearances. Under duress, and threatened with indefinite imprisonment without trial, they had to make statutory declarations against their will. It is hoped that with this publication, Singaporeans will know what actually happened and decide for themselves if there was a national security threat that necessitated the mounting of Operation Spectrum. This book is a portal to Singapore’s soul, to the human spirit that can be suppressed or manipulated but never defeated. It is also a signal to the current generation of the task to be completed: to exercise the inalienable rights of free citizens even while the Internal Security Act and other legislation denies these rights. The book also provides a kind of social media map of all those who played along with the defenestration of the innocents. Many of these collaborators with state repression are in positions of public influence and private wealth, some expressing private sympathy while maintaining public loyalty to the regime. Paradoxically, mired as they are in moral compromise, they are less free, and possibly more fearful, than those who were detained in 1987 and now speak with clear voices. Singapore’s future will be the outcome of a contest between an administration-in-perpetuity (in power since 1959) that has big data reaching into almost every aspect of people’s lives, and the upwelling pressure from social inequality. The weakening economy and the declining salience of Singapore’s geo-strategic location will be best compensated for by the emergence of a democratic Singapore. Will a free citizenry emerge to challenge rule by the algorithms of a wealthy elite? Christopher Tremewan Research Fellow in Political Studies University of Auckland Singapore is, in some ways, a model for many people around the world in that it seems to provide the full implementation of a neo-liberal capitalist agenda without being troubled by democracy and human rights. It has achieved prosperity for some (but not all) of its citizens. The price has been a loss of freedom and vitality that still keeps the country in a state of political paralysis. It is a false model, one which the "Marxist conspirators" challenged then and continue to challenge now. This book tells the stories of many who were involved in this troubling episode in Singapore's history and who continue to be affected by it. These stories are a vital part of modern Singapore history and should be read by everyone. I am honoured to know so many of these witnesses who have been willing to take the risk to tell the truth. Professor Shelley Wright Department of Aboriginal Studies, Langara College, Vancouver, Canada
By the author of Playing Madame Mao, hailed by Time magazine as "one of the best novels ever written about Singapore". Ismael, a transplanted Singaporean, lives on a bucolic suburban Brisbane street. His job is to decide whether asylum-seekers get to stay in the country, a dilemma that never fails to remind him of his own immigrant status. But then his life begins to take on the hue of a nightmare: his neighbour inexplicably commits suicide, his wife dies of cancer, his daughter abandons him for the United States, and his Siamese cat goes missing. In Lau Siew Mei’s new novel, an enclosed Australian neighbourhood becomes a microcosm of a world increasingly hostile towards migrants.
